


3% Hydrocortilene

by 28ghosts



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, and it's not quite an unhealthy coping mechanism, but things aren't going great, it's not quite an unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 11:39:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15363834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/28ghosts/pseuds/28ghosts
Summary: Julian forgets himself until Ezri’s out of the shower and asks from the other side of the room, “Are you drunk?”





	3% Hydrocortilene

**Author's Note:**

> A [suggested soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKudKA9LvZ0):
>
>> The stage is set:  
> Someone's gonna do something someone else will regret  
> I speak in smoke signals and you answer in code  
> The fuse will have to run out sometime

Julian is so absorbed in his reading that he barely notices Ezri come in. Distantly, he’s aware she’s gone straight to the shower, and he figures he should probably plan on showering after her. They _are_ going out tonight, he remembers. That had been why he’d hesitated to break into Miles’s whiskey. But surely he can read a _bit_ more while Ezri’s showering--

The next PADD. Julian forgets himself until Ezri’s out of the shower and asks from the other side of the room, “Are you drunk?”

Julian considers it. Yes, he is, isn’t he. “A bit,” he says. He shakes his head. “Let me grab a hypo--”

“I got it,” Ezri says.

She sounds annoyed, but affectionately annoyed, maybe. He thinks. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. Then again, when Ezri’s genuinely angry with him, she usually doesn’t hold back in expressing it, so he’s probably in the clear.

It is good, what they have, most of the time. They do have plenty to talk about, at least in theory. But it isn’t easy to find things to _talk_ about the way it used to be. He keeps up with conferences and journals better than she does, and she’s both not as much of a generalist as he is, medically speaking. She’s more a generalist than him, generally speaking. Mostly the station seems to have quieted down, the two of them with it.

Ezri issues an order to the replicator; he’s expecting it, but he still sighs in annoyance when she slides one hand down the back of his head, fingertips dragging down the back of his scalp the way she knows he likes. “Should I do the honors?” she asks.

She tugs at his hair a little, and he lets his head tip back further. He may loom over Ezri most of the time to her great irritation, but she likes to even things out whenever she can. “If you’d care to,” he says. With his neck arced back like this, the words are tight and awkward in his throat.

The hypospray hisses; either because of Ezri’s distractions or his current state of intoxication, he barely feels it. A metabolizer for the alcohol and a mild analgesic - hydrocortilene - to ease the abrupt return to sobriety. Ezri walks the empty hypo back to the replicator. “You can’t keep drinking that stuff like it’s synthehol, Julian.”

He rubs the back of his neck, eyes closed, tongue pressed to the roof his his mouth. A moment of nausea and profound vertigo and it’s over; modern medicine has done its thing, if unpleasantly.

Footfalls. Ezri’s hands push away his so she can cradle the back of his head, scratching just the right way to make at least some of the tension in him melt away. “You alright there?”

“Mm. I am now.”

She laughs a little. “Glad to hear it. Now get a move on or else we’ll be late.”

Julian is drowsy, a little too comfortable to be genuinely enthusiastic, but the holosuite was his idea, and it’s not Ezri’s fault he’d let himself get distracted by old CMO’s logs. And one of the bottles of whiskey Miles had left. He sits up, blinks hard a few times to clear his eyes. Bit of a pathetic scene he must have made, PADDs scattered everywhere and a half-glass from a half-empty bottle.

What the hell, he’s sobered up enough. While Ezri’s getting ready, he finishes off the glass. It hits him while he’s showering -- just enough to cheer him up a little bit. He gets dressed in the outfit Ezri’s picked out for him. It’s her program they’re using tonight. He’s not quite sure what he’s getting into, but he’ll evidently be well-dressed while he’s at it.

Ezri is waiting for him, impatient. She all but hauls him straight out of their quarters. The way she looks at him in the ‘lift is half ‘I wish you’d take better care of yourself,’ half ‘I swear if we’re late because of you--’. He’s not quite sure how he looks back at her. Apologetic is what he intends. He’s not sure if it works or not. For the last seconds before the ‘lift doors open back up, she stares at him like she doesn’t know him at all.


End file.
